I seem not to have a good understanding of this at all! Could I have clarification as to whether popular consensus is that this is a single gene trait or a polygenic trait? I know much has been made of recent work and some photos that apparently provide evidence supporting single gene involvement, but it's still not clear to me if this is generally accepted or not. (For those interested in answering this as a poll, the following may be of use:

I believe there are at least 3 alleles, dunno how much genes.1st allele the wildtype2nd allele the palebreasted/non salmon breast type3rd allele the enhanced type like in serama cocopop coloration

The 2nd type could also be het wheaten or het eb.The red shoulders of purebreed silver cockerels could be mahogany involvement or another enhanced type of Autosomal red.I have no trouble breeding intense salmonbreasted pullets and clean white shouldered S/S cockerels from the same parents.

I often get 50:50 ratio's cockerels with non red shoulders (all golden) and red/orange shoulders when crossing silver and gold dutch bantams. Small numbers though.

Yes, allele. Just wanted to describe them by a typical phenotype effect.Most genetic variations are alleles... Except things like position effect (a different locus (translocation) or orientation of the gene alters it's expression).

I had a strain of S/S, e/e bantams in which the males were all red shouldered and the females looked like normal silver females. Worked for years to clean up the males without outcrossing to no avail. So autosomal red can definitely be present on wild type.

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Pilgrim in a foreign land and true believer.1st John 5:11-12

Absolutely concur with Bushman. Have a strain of Blue Silver Duckwing Welsummers, e+/e+, S/S, Bl/bl+ that are all red shouldered in the males. I believe mahogany to be present due to the intense redness of the females breasts.

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If you have nothing............ ......... give it away!

The cocopop serama cockerels are silver hackled, dun or chocolate tailed but their body is buff colored. The purebreed silver version S/S have a wide silver lace around the breastfeathers.On top of that the cocopops have dark single lacing!

het silver:

homozygous silver can have a white lace between the dark lace and the buff.

I am one of the believers in a single autosomal gene that is responsible for 'Autosomal Red'. It has in fact been noted by researchers from Hutt's time, and differentiated from sex-linked gold s+, but little if any work was done on it until Reeder.Reeder confused the entire issue, as a result of his ego, by using a genetic symbol Ap ( for Autosomal Pheomelanin) that was already used for another gene, Apterylosis(autosomal nakedness) and ignoring the Somes convention of '+' sub scripts because his ' lack of Autosomal Pheomelanin' was found to be the norm in Grey Jungle fowl not Red Jungle fowl.Working with a line of silver & gold bantams I was able to eventually produce a pure silver variant from the original gold line.However it is not as simple as it seems. Interaction of other genes with Ar especially mahogany can have dramatic effects. Mahogany & Ar on a Silver sex-linked bird ,especially if Wheaten based, can & does give gold/buff/red tinted birds, the same can be true of Mahogany and 'lack of Ar' on a sex-linked silver bird.Salmon Faverolle phenotype is an example. This also is a hypothesis for the (Wheaten) Ko-Shamo and possibly the Pekin.Gene studies are much simpler when they can be studied in isolation.David